Me, Myself, and I
by rain chant
Summary: I met myself for the first time under less-than-promising circumstances: destroying my organization's time machine. Why would Other Me do that? Now, dealing with paradoxes, time and space, and aliens, I'm glad the Doctor is on my side...
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Doctor Who is not mine. Enjoy!

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><p><strong>Now<strong>

I was face to face with myself again, and this time, _I_ held the gun.

The me who was not me stared at my face, not the weapon. In a way, I was proud of this. At least I knew that when it was my turn to stare down the barrel of a gun, I wouldn't show fear.

"I knew you'd track me down," Other Me said. "I did the same thing when I was your age."

"How does it end, then?" I asked. My hands were shaking. I really didn't want to shoot myself. I wanted the whole thing to be over, to get back to my own time and my own place and my own life.

Other Me shrugged. "You don't really want to know the future," she asked. "Trust me. Besides, it can change."

The hope in the eyes of my older self almost made me falter. "The Doctor isn't here," I said. "It's just you and me this time, and we have to settle this. We can't mess up the world again. _I_ can't. And I can't see any way to resolve this paradox."

"Then shoot," said Other Me, raising her chin.

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><p><strong>December 24, 2015<strong>

There were only twenty people at the party, but the level of excitement was so high that there might as well have been two hundred. Chairs had been set up around the room so that our magnificent machine was the centerpiece, and all of the people in lab coats held glasses of champagne instead of clipboards. In ten years, the underground lab had never seen such cheer.

My boss, Dr. Reynolds, stood up and raised his glass. "A toast," he declared, "to the hardworking men and women of the PITT. For the first time in history, on this night, a human being will successfully attempt time travel!"

The room exploded in cheers and everyone drank to the toast. I smiled, but kept my eyes on the computer in front of me, checking my calculations again and again.

"For so many years," Dr. Reynolds continued, "man has wondered if he could indeed cross the mists of time to see what lies beyond–or what lies behind. Tonight, Mr. James Riddler will make the journey into our own future!" There was more applause, and my friend Riv stood up, looking a little embarrassed but smirking all the same. "I'd like to thank my esteemed colleagues for their assistance in this project, especially Dr. Myers, Dr. Patterson, and Dr. Mason. Also, none of this would be possible without the excellent work of our chief engineer, Ms. Micky Summers!"

I looked around at my name to see the entire room standing and cheering for me. Well, that was nice of them. "The time machine is ready when you are, Dr. Reynolds," I said.

Everyone gasped. Dr. Reynolds nodded. "Let us begin," he said.

Riv came up to me while I retyped the equations into our master computer and spoke almost in my ear. "Hey," he said. "Don't look so worried. I'm only going forward an hour."

"I do not look worried," I told him. "And it's actually only fifty minutes. You'll be back in time for Christmas Day."

"I won't be 'back' anywhere," he countered. "You're the ones who are catching up to me."

"Get in the machine," I said. "And good luck."

He blew me a kiss before he walked over to the time machine and used the straps to bind himself to the cylindrical engine. It had such a powerful cooling system that the engine shouldn't get very warm at all…at least, that was what the tests had indicated. The supercomputer wired to the power source would be able to make small jumps, but my computer would be the one to send him into the future or the past. I was holding the life of my friend in my hands and I was about to send him out to be a human guinea pig.

He looked over at me and winked.

Well, he seemed fine with it.

The other engineers helped me with the preparations, and finally, all I had to do was push the button. Large red buttons by themselves shouldn't be threatening, but this one was almost laughing at me. _Push me_, it said, _and let's see what happens_. Never let it be said that I let a button intimidate me.

Before I could hit the button, however, someone yelled, "STOP THE TEST!"

It was me.

I was older, with faint wrinkles around my mouth and on my forehead, but my eyes were still bright and my hair was still dark and I looked pretty good, all things considering. It was small consolation compared to the fact that the universe was about to explode.

Every physicist in the room held their breath and looked up at the sky, waiting for the apocalypse. After a few seconds, in which all of reality absolutely failed to collapse, they let out a collective sigh of relief. Then, their eyes turned either to the me standing beside the time machine or me myself, standing in front of the computer.

Other Me had managed to appear out of thin air, stop the test, and ruin many of the theories of the scientists in the room, all in about ten seconds.

Dr. Reynolds stepped forward. "Micky Summers?" he asked.

"That's me," Other Me said with a quick toss of her hair. "Hello everyone. Hi, Riv," she said, turning to him and waving. Then she turned around and looked me in the eye. "Sorry," she said.

Then, she pulled a small spherical white something out of the overcoat she wore and held it up in the air. Staring straight at Dr. Reynolds, she said, "I see you."

She pressed a button, threw the sphere, and part of the lab was suddenly in flames.

Scientists scrambled everywhichway, some to save their skins, some to save their equipment. Riv loosened his straps as fast as he could, and Dr. Reynolds just stood there, staring at Other Me with a strange curl to his lip.

I barely saw all of that as I ran at the Other Me as fast as my legs could take me. This was my–OUR–work going up in flames. "What the hell are you doing?" I yelled.

She pulled something else out of those pockets: a handgun. She hit me on the collarbone with the butt end as hard as she could, and I dropped like a stone. My vision went black.

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><p>In case anyone has never broken a collarbone, it hurts. A lot.<p>

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><p>And when I woke up in the hospital a day later with my arm strapped to my body, so as to immobilize my collarbone, the first words out of my mouth were, "I hit me!"<p>

The male nurse checking my blood pressure fumbled and nearly dropped my unbound arm. "I'm sorry?" he asked.

I was in an off-white hospital room with one bed and a small area with two chairs for visitors. The nurse's nametag read 'Rory Williams, RN.'

"I hit me!" I insisted. Stupid, yes, because no one else would have a clue what I meant–PITT was very, very, very secret about our time travelling project, so much so that the government itself had only the slightest inkling of what we did. However, I was a little shaken. "Why would I do that? Why would I hit me?"

"Um, I dunno," the nurse said. "Why would you do that?"

"I have no clue!" I took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. I'm delirious. What's happened?"

"You've been here a few hours," he explained, looking at the monitors I was hooked up to. "They didn't say much when you were brought in, just that there'd been an accident. Some government thing, wasn't it? You were the only one brought in. They called me to come in late last night."

So I go back in time to stop a test, blow up part of the lab, and only injure myself. Well done, Other Me.

"What exactly happened?" he asked. He had soft light eyes and the kind of face that wasn't intimidating, the kind that made you want to talk.

He wouldn't believe me anyway, so I said breezily, "I traveled backward through time just so I could break my own collarbone."

He froze. "Really?" he asked.

Didn't expect him to believe me. "Well, no. Yes. No," I said. "Joking, just joking."

He paused for a moment, and sat down beside my bed in one of the almost-comfortable hospital chairs. "Do you, by any chance," he began, "know the Doctor?"

"Sorry?" I asked. "Doctor who?"

He hesitated for a moment. Then, with perfect timing, Dr. Reynolds walking into the room, closely followed by another man in a white coat who I assumed was the doctor seeing to me.

"All right, Rory, if the patient is normal you may leave," my doctor said. Rory looked up at him, and back at me.

"I'll be back later with your food," he said. "Happy Christmas." And left.

When the doctor left, Dr. Reynolds told me that they'd been able to save most of the equipment, and they had moved it to a safe place. "No more sabotages," he said, with a smile that missed his eyes by about a mile.

"I have no clue why I did that," I told him. "Honestly. I don't know why I would try to get rid of my own work."

"Well, you haven't done it yet," he said. "Perhaps you won't. In fact, we'll just make sure that you'll decide not to."

And perhaps I was just imagining things, but the way he said that made my blood run cold.

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><p><em>AN: So, time paradoxes and far too many guns. And Rory Williams on Christmas Day. There will be more canon characters next chapter. I hoped you liked it. If you'd like, leave a review! It makes my day. _


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Doctor Who isn't mine.

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><p><strong>December 25, 2015<strong>

When Rory came back later with my food, as promised, he was wearing a red Santa hat. It made me laugh.

"Just trying to bring in some Christmas cheer," he said, and very gently checked my collarbone and sling. "It's probably time for more pain medication. I'll put an IV in your arm so you won't need to worry about the pills."

The IV sounded good to me. "Food _and_ drugs? Best Christmas present I ever got." I hesitated. He was working on Christmas Day; it wasn't exactly my fault…well, yes it was, actually. I'd injured me. "I'm sorry that you're missing all the parties because of me."

"Oh, no, no parties here," he said as he hooked up the IV. "Don't worry about it. My wife's bringing me Christmas dinner."

Wife. Married. Too bad.

A sharp pain shot through my side for just a second, and I gasped. "Just a muscle spasm," I assured Rory. "So, how long have you been married?"

"About five years." Rory beamed with pride when he spoke about his wife. "I met Amy when we were both kids. She's the best woman I know."

"Children?" I inquired, opening a cup of applesauce with my teeth.

"One," he said.

"How old?"

"Um…well, she still seems like a baby to me sometimes."

Fair enough. The applesauce had a little cinnamon in it, just the way I like it. Eating it one-handed, though, was proving a bit more difficult than I had imagined. I splattered some all over my hospital gown and Rory helped me clean up.

That was when a pretty red-haired woman walked into the room with a picnic basket. She raised an eyebrow at the scene, and I hurried to smile and wave.

Somehow, when Rory looked at her, his plain features didn't look plain anymore. He looked at her like she was the only person in the world. "Ms. Summers, this is Amy, my wife," he said.

We smiled at each other, and she nodded at my food and said, "You're welcome to eat with us, if you like. I bet my food is better than the hospital's stuff."

The hospital had given me soup, green beans, and mashed potatoes. "I'd kill for some meat," I admitted.

"Then we'll eat together," Amy said. She turned to her husband and said, "_Please_ tell me you haven't taken to wearing hats now." Rory turned red, took the hat off of his own head, and put it on Amy's. She laughed and scoffed and took it off.

An hour and several slices of turkey later, I was feeling rather drowsy (though the meds probably had something to do with that) and after hearing a little bit about the couple's life, how they met and fell in love, the talk turned back around to me and PITT. "So, what is this PITT anyway?" Amy asked, putting a bit of turkey in her mouth. "God, who thinks of those names?"

"I think the acronym came first in this case. Physicists Invested in..." I began in a singsong, and then stopped. Had the meds made me so stupid? My collarbone was starting to hurt again. "Sorry, can't really tell you. It's top secret."

"Well, any job that gives you broken bones can't be all that good for you, can it?" she continued. "I mean, don't get me wrong, it must be fun to be all top-secret, but how can physics equal hospital trips on Christmas Day?"

My whole chest was throbbing now. "Can I get more pain meds, please?" I asked Rory before turning back to his wife. "It's physics put into practice," I explained. "Math never hurt anyone–"

"I don't think that's true," Amy muttered.

"–but machines do, and I'm an engineer, so it's an occupational hazard." The pain in my arm faded as Rory let more medicine drip through the IV, but my side suddenly spasmed again. "Ow!" I hissed.

"Everything all right?" he asked.

"Yes, thank you," I said. For a moment, my breath seemed a little too shallow…but then I breathed easy again. Too much food.

"What kind of machines have you got?" Amy asked, leaning forward.

"The kind that if I tell you what they are, I'll have to kill you."

"Ooh, those kind," she mocked gently. My teeth chattered briefly. "Oh, are you cold?"

No. I was actually warm. Too warm, almost. I should have been sweating, but when I touched my face it was dry. And my teeth chattered again like they had a mind of their own. "S-s-something's wrong," I informed the other two.

Rory was quick to check my pulse. "Your heart's racing," he said, confused. "Okay, we'll just give you some–"

My heart took that opportunity to stop entirely.

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><p>Given the choice between broken collarbones and heart attacks, I'd take the bone any day of the week.<p>

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><p>When I awoke, the first thing that came into focus was the clock on the wall. I had been out for around three hours. Rory and Amy were both still with me, along with what seemed like twenty doctors but were really only five. I didn't think that so many doctors would show up on Christmas day, but apparently I was wrong.<p>

And then I saw Dr. Reynolds and several of the other physicists at the back of the room–and Riv as well, looking not much worse for wear for our encounter in the lab–and realized whose influence had gotten me this care.

I was now hooked up to all sorts of beeping machinery, and two of the doctors were checking my vital stats while a third informed me how lucky I was to be alive. "You should have told us that you were allergic to this painkiller," he admonished.

If I was allergic to painkillers, it was news to me. And when he named the medicine I had, I was really bemused. I knew for a fact that I'd had the exact same meds when I'd had surgery on my knee a few years earlier, and I'd been fine.

Too many doctors are a bad combination, whether they have Ph.D.'s in medicine or physics, because the inevitably have a hard time agreeing on a course of action. They bickered until Dr. Reynolds told them that they could debate as well in the hallway as they could in the room; obediently, they left. Riv only got a chance to wave at me before he, too, was shooed out of the room.

Before she, too, was pushed out, Amy leaned over and said, "Listen, make sure you talk to Rory before they make him leave."

Dr. Reynolds smiled at me before he walked out of the room.

Rory sat down very quickly next to me and spoke in a low voice. "Do you feel okay now?" I nodded, and he said, "Good, because this might not be easy for you to hear. There was much, much more benzodiazepine in your IV than was safe. I didn't notice–I just assumed it was okay–and I'm so, very sorry. But it shouldn't have been like that. I think you were poisoned."

He kindly gave me a moment to process this before he said, "You said, earlier, that you went back in time to break your own bones. Is that true?"

Well, I was just poisoned. What was I going to lose by telling the truth? "Yes."

He shifted forward. "I have a friend who works with time. I mean, he's really good with time. I think he can help you, if you want. He's called the Doctor."

"And he's a physicist?"

"…maybe. Probably. He's…different, but if anyone can help you, he can."

I was feeling tired again, so I put my head back against the pillows. The Doctor, potential physicist, friend of Rory and Amy, good with time...and apparently not worried about trivial things like time travel. Maybe I could use the help right now. "Sure," I said.

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><p><em>AN: I'd like to thank Laughy-Taffy the Grape, Time and Fate, chewy13 and Simpa007 for being awesome and reviewing/alerting/favoriting. I'd also like to thank everyone who's taken a look at this story. I'll do my best with it!_

_It's now 4:30 in the morning for me, so hopefully this chapter makes sense. Leave a review, if you would like. It always makes me happy. _


	3. Chapter 3

Doctor Who is still not mine. I'll let you know when that changes.

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><p><strong>December 25, 2015<strong>

Riv had come to sit with me while I was asleep, but from the looks of things he hadn't lasted long before he'd drifted off to sleep too. He always looks about five years younger asleep, and he drools a little. I wiped some of it off his chin very carefully with the sleeve of my gown.

Who wants me dead, Riv? Who did I anger?

I hadn't realized that I'd made any sound, but my friend suddenly snorted and jerked upright, awake and blinking.

"Happy Christmas," I said.

He rubbed his face and said, "Ugh. Drooling again. Happy Christmas. You feeling okay?"

"Sure. I think my heart's working again." I tried to sit up a little, but a sudden sharp pain shot through my shoulder and I swore loudly.

"Not _that _okay," he commented, moving my pillow so I'd be more comfortable. "Don't hurt yourself because you're so glad to see me, now."

"Get out of here. You were so glad to see me that you fell asleep."

"It's been a long day," he said. "You know it's been almost 24 hours since we tried to start that damn test, and you came and started blowing up the lab?"

Honestly, I'd lost track of time, because I'd been unconscious for most of it. "Riv, what happened? What'd you see?"

"She–you–the other one–"

"I call her Other Me," I said.

"Other You appeared out of nowhere. There was a sizzling sound, like you get when you break apart an electric current. And then, there Other You was. Started yelling as soon as she appeared; can't say I was surprised."

There was no way he didn't flinch when Other Me appeared, so I gave him a skeptical look, which he ignored. "Then she waved at me," he recalled. "There was something on her hand."

"What? Like gum?"

"No. Like writing. An equation, but so smudged I couldn't tell what it was for. Besides, I never really got the hang of all those symbols."

"You didn't see any of it?" I pressed. It could have been my time-travelling equation, or something else that would give me a clue…

"There was an x?"

Almost every physics equation ever written has an x somewhere in it. No help.

"After she hit you–and she hit you hard, Micky. Other You has a mean hook."

"And a mean gun. I can assure you it hurt. What happened then?"

He paused. "Well…she just looked around for a moment, and then Reynolds ran to the tool bench and picked up a crowbar."

"What?"

"Yeah. Other You hit him over the head before he could get in a good swing, though."

"And he didn't go to the hospital?" Seems like he should be in the other room, if Other Me hit him as hard as she hit me.

"No. And Dr. Mason had some burns from an electrical fire, but he didn't come into this hospital either. They're both alright. You're the only one that ended up on a gurney headed to surgery. They had to reconstruct part of your collarbone, did you know?"

"Yeah." Dr. Mason had been in my room today after my heart attack. He had seemed fine, and so had Dr. Reynolds.

It was almost insulting that I was the only one in a hospital bed. If _I_ had gone back in time, I would have made sure that I took down at least two of them with me. However, it was a moot point. _I_ wasn't ever going back in time to stop that test. And how would that affect time, I wonder? Would the test go as planned, and I'd wake up one day with a whole other life in my head? Never remembering what happened in this one at all?

Trying to find equations for that sort of thing is very difficult, and after a few seconds I stopped trying.

"After that," Riv went on, "some of the scientists looked like they were thinking about jumping you–Other You–and so she hit her wrist and vanished."

"Just like that? I can hit my wrist and travel through time? Well, looks like I've been wasting my life with all of those equations and machines!" A little bit heavy on the sarcasm there, but I figured I was allowed to criticize myself.

"She had a device. I might kill to get my hands on it." Riv's voice was low. I assumed he was being facetious.

Before I could reply, someone called out from the hall, "Hello! Sorry, don't mean to interrupt, but I heard that someone needs a doctor."

In the doorway, framed in light, was the strangest-looking man I'd ever seen.

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><p>I work with physicists, so when I say that this man looked strange, I mean that he looked very strange. He wore a jacket that looked like something straight from a few decades ago, a white shirt, suspenders with his trousers, and a blue bowtie. His hair, and there was plenty of it, black hair, was smoothed back over his head, and his eyes were light and sharp and bright.<p>

He moved into the room like a bowtie-clad whirlwind, clapping his hands together and looking at my monitors. After him came Rory, giving me a small wave. He pointed at the man and mouthed, '_that's him._'

Riv stared at the man as though he'd never seen anything like him before.

"Well, that looks like it's in order," my visitor said. "I'm the Doctor. That's what everyone calls me."

I shook the hand he offered me. "Micky Summers. And this is my friend James Riddler."

Riv swallowed. "Actually, I was just leaving," he said. "I'll be back tomorrow, Micky. Feel better." He kissed my forehead quickly and left the room; the Doctor's eyes followed him as he left.

"Well, now, Micky," the Doctor said, turning back to me and sitting in Riv's chair with his legs crossed, "you work with time travel, don't you?"

"Do you?"

"Ah, good question," he said. "I do, actually. I work a lot with time travel."

"Are you a physicist?" I wanted to know.

"I'm a lot better than a physicist," he assured me with a gleam in his eye. "Physicists sit around and make up theories about the universe. I go out and see what the universe is really like."

This made me sit up, fast, and then lay back down quickly when my shoulder reminded me, in no uncertain terms, that it didn't want to be moved. I did not care. "You can travel through time? It really works? Forwards and backwards, either direction, as far as you like, without exploding the universe?"

"Not just time. Space too." His glance was sideways and almost sly.

This was something I had to see.

"But let's talk about you. What happened to you? Why are you in the hospital?"

I looked from him to Rory, leaning against the wall. I needed help; if I was going to trust anyone, it might as well be them. "I work for an organization called PITT," I said. "Physicists Invested in Time Travel. I'm the chief engineer, and I signed onto the project five years ago. We're trying to create an operational time machine."

"Five years? And how old are you now?"

"Twenty-five," I said. "I was recruited right out of college. Dr. Reynolds is the head of the project, and he approached me with the offer. It's decent pay, a lot of cloak-and-dagger, and it's absolutely fascinating work. Three months ago, we started testing our machine remotely–using the computer to send it forward in time a few seconds, then a few minutes, then a full hour. Last night was supposed to be our first test with a live subject–my friend Riv, the one that you met."

"Oh, it's definitely Christmas," the Doctor muttered. "So, an operational time machine with its first test, and then what happened?"

"I appeared." His eyebrows raised, and I explained, "A future version of me appeared. This older me stopped the test, apologized to me, and then pulled some sort of bomb out of her pocket and blew up part of the lab."

Both Rory and the Doctor's eyes were steady on my face. "And that isn't even the best part," I said, gaining momentum. "When I try to stop her, she pulls out a gun and breaks my collarbone! Dr. Reynolds finds a crowbar and she hits him too! And then she vanishes just like that, as though the lab's not in flames and the test isn't in a shambles and my computers aren't damaged and I'm not on the floor unconscious! Why would I do that? What would possibly make me destroy my own work?" The more I thought about it, without the painkillers clouding my mind, the angrier I got.

"Once she got here, someone tried to poison her," Rory said quietly. "They tampered with her pain medication, and she went into cardiac arrest."

The Doctor hummed. "Micky. Have you told anyone else that you've been poisoned? Your friend Riv, your boss, anyone besides us?"

Well. Now that I thought about it… "No. You two are the first."

"Why?" It was posed as a question, but the look in his eyes said that he already knew what my answer was going to be.

I hated to admit it. I still trusted Other Me. Despite the fact that she'd acted like a madwoman, I couldn't believe that I would try to destroy everything without good cause.

And if anyone was trying to kill me now, the people in PITT had the most cause. I didn't want to give any of them the heads-up that I was onto them.

I might have told Riv about it. Might have. At least, that was what I told myself. When I looked back at the Doctor, his eyes were sympathetic. He gave me a quick smile before he said, "Well, I'd like a look at this time machine of yours. Let's see if you lot have got anything right about time at last."

My equations were perfect, and I knew it, but there were more important matters. "I would show you, but I can't really get up. And I don't know where the machine is now; Dr. Reynolds told me he moved it."

The Doctor thought for a moment, his face scrunched up, and said, "Well, then, we'll just use my time machine to find your time machine. Shouldn't be too hard; how many time machines do you find wandering around anyway?" He rummaged around in a pocket–and given my previous experiences with that sort of thing, I half-expected him to draw out a gun. Instead, he pulled out a vial of some pink liquid. "Rory told me you were in a lot of pain, so this should last you until we get to the TARDIS to fix you up."

I eyed it, and then eyed him, and looked back at it again. He leaned forward.

"Micky, this is the time where you decide if you trust me or not," he said, very soberly. "I can help you, but only if you trust me and don't ask too many questions. Time gets rather cranky when things like this happen, but we can sort it out if we're very careful."

He didn't look away; he didn't blink. I reached for the liquid without really meaning to. He had those sort of eyes.

"I should warn you," I said, uncorking the vial. "I love asking questions." The pink stuff tasted terrible, but the pain started to fade almost immediately. In a few minutes, I was able to sit up.

Rory, being the good man that he is, volunteered to go distract the hospital's security while the Doctor got me out to his machine, what he called the TARDIS. "Be careful, okay?" I said. "I wouldn't want to have to bail you out of jail, and I doubt your wife would like that either."

He grimaced at the thought, and I giggled. But the Doctor's face was solemn. "We'll have bigger problems than the police to deal with if we don't get you out of here," he told me.

He had a point.

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><p><em>AN: I'd like to thank Simpa007, Alikai, Time and Fate, Laughy-Taffy the Grape, and iiJoshyBoo for reviewing/alerting. You are all awesome-sauce._

_There's a ton of dialogue in this chapter, and I've tried not to make it too choppy. There will be action next chapter, I promise! And more of the Doctor being the Doctor._

_If you'd like, leave a review. They are wonderful things. _


	4. Chapter 4

Doctor Who is not mine yet.

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><p><strong>In the TARDIS…<strong>

Every day for the rest of my life I am going to wake up in the morning with one goal–to construct a TARDIS. If I could build one, I wouldn't be just an engineer anymore; I'd be a veritable god, practically enshrined in physics history, and I'd be able to quit my day job. Creating an artificial black hole might prove to be a bit beyond me, though.

The first thing that the Doctor did once we reached the TARDIS, and while I was gawking at the inside and trying very hard not to touch anything, was to rummage around in some back room until he found a little beeping green thing that he clipped onto my broken bone. It stung like anything, but he explained that it would rebuild the bone at a speed my body couldn't hope to match.

Despite his request that I not ask too many questions, once I'd demonstrated that I had a pretty good grasp of construction, mathematics and theories about the universe, the Doctor didn't mind explaining to me exactly how the TARDIS worked. In fact, I think he enjoyed running around pulling levers and naming them almost at a shout, and then giving me a brief rundown on the mechanics behind them. To be perfectly honest, I didn't understand most of his explanations. Once he started talking about variables that I'd never even heard of I was lost. I did recognize some of the same principles that I had used on my own time machine, as well as the look of pride and even wonder on his face as he talked. I'd seen it on the faces of PITT's crew when they talked about our machine too. Suddenly, I was impatient. My time machine was out there in the world somewhere and I wanted to know where.

I needed a good name for it. I couldn't just keep calling it 'Time Machine.'

"Anna," I muttered, fingering the Wibbley lever.

"Sorry, what?" asked the Doctor.

"Nothing," I said. "How are you going to find my machine?"

"Well," said the Doctor, "I don't have any coordinates, so I'm going to push this red button here, which is a finder-thingy. And then, when I type in what we're looking for, here, the TARDIS will try and lock onto its temporal location…"

The explanation continued for about thirty more seconds, at which point something dinged and the Doctor yelled, "Ha! There it is! Now, watch this!" He pulled a lever, and the entire ship jerked hard enough to knock me off my feet.

I fell on my good side, but my healing collarbone still made its presence known. From my position on the floor I could hear the inner workings of the machine, the humming of its core and the whooshing sound as it took off. "Sorry, sorry!" the Doctor called. "You want to hang on when I do that. Sorry."

The TARDIS's inner workings sounded a little like a heartbeat to me. I picked myself up off of the floor and held onto a railing for dear life.

Then, suddenly, we were still. The TARDIS's engines powered down, and the only sounds I could hear were the normal at-rest noises of the machine.

The Doctor half-ran to stand next to the door, and gave me an expectant smile while he swept an arm out as if to say, '_go on, take a look_.' A different place and time was outside. "When and where are we?" I asked.

Taking a look at his watch, he said, "It's December 26, 2015, three am. As for where…look and see."

I grasped the handle with my good hand and pulled open the door.

**December 26, 2015**

The only lights I could see came from the TARDIS; about fifty feet out, the room faded into shadow. It isn't possible for shadows to 'swallow' light, since darkness is only the absence of light and doesn't have a mind of its own. But were I not a student of science, I would have said that the shadow was consuming all the light from the TARDIS and was reaching its sticky fingers out to us, too.

Ridiculous, of course. All the light illuminated was a gray concrete floor extending away until it hit gray walls covered in shelves. I could just make out the ceiling, high above us, held up by steel supports. This place smelled like dust and age.

"We really moved in time _and_ space," I said. We moved in both time and space in one jump. The Doctor's smile stretched across his face.

"Good, isn't it?"

"Time and space," I repeated. "I need to rebuild my machine. It only does time."

"That's the first thing you can do, after we find it," he said.

We stepped out together, and the Doctor pulled a little silver cylinder out of those pockets. When he hit the button, it lit up and emitted a high-pitched squeal. He looked at it and nodded as though it had confirmed some idea of his.

"What is that?" I whispered.

"Sonic screwdriver. Most useful tool in the universe; good for scanning things and checking things out and...making things go crazy." He clicked the button a few times, and it squealed a few different pitches in succession. "Find the right frequency, and you can do almost anything."

We had to find my time machine (Anna? No, I didn't like the name enough for the machine. Tracy maybe?), but still, that was a fascinating piece of engineering. "When we have time, can you take it apart for me so I can examine it?"

Even in the dim light, the Doctor looked absolutely horrified.

"No messing with the sonic!" he said, then muttered something negative about trying to put it back together again.

Alright then. I'd have to build one myself. The Doctor moved to the shelves along the walls, using his sonic for more light, and I followed. They were filled with the kind of things you'd see in a garage: oil cans, carpet cleaners, coils of wire and extension cords, bottles of WD40, various screws and bolts and tools. Everything was covered in dust and in some cases, spiderwebs. My companion held the light closer to the items, and we both saw outlines in the dust that could have been made by searching fingers. Someone had been here recently.

The Doctor put a finger to his lips and we looked over every inch of that room. On another shelf were spare parts for my machine, still wrapped in bubble wrap and looking none the worse for wear for the lab attack. To the right of that shelf was a red door. He cracked it open and peered through, softly exclaiming "Ha!"

The long room that the red door led into looked like a junkyard.

We almost hit the door against a gutted washing machine in our way, and had to squeeze by a broken oven to even enter the room. This place was lit, not by any central lighting, but by the feeble glow from the lights of the electronics. Some of these things were still _plugged in_.

Laptops, desktops, fans, cell phones, air conditioners, dryers, tellys, vacuums, microscopes, even an old Honda whose engine laid in parts on the floor–most everything had been taken apart, sometimes with care, and sometimes with wild abandon. From another shelf, a set of ambulance lights whirled around. I stepped over broken glass from smashed light bulbs and approached one of the desktops, but as soon as I hit a button, all I saw was the blue screen of computer death.

The Doctor was examining a tangled mass of metal and wires when I moved to his side and said in a whisper, "Some of them are still plugged in."

He picked up a blender; the light that indicated it had power was on, but when he hit the button, nothing happened. It was easy to see that whoever had taken the blender apart hadn't put the motor back in correctly. "That's a motorized tie-rack motor," he told me. "Devilish contraptions, can't even spin a tie properly, let alone make a proper drink. This looks like a workshop to me; do you know this place?"

I shook my head. "I'd have put everything back together," I informed him. Thinking back on my high school days, that wasn't exactly true, but I'd gotten a little better at reconstruction since then.

The Doctor motioned towards a gray steel door set into the wall, beside a broken projector. "That looks like our door. I'll go first; you stay here until I say it's safe."

He slid the door open barely an inch, and an earsplitting siren, hiding somewhere in the room, began wailing like we'd tried to steal the Crown Jewels. The sonic was out and squealing before I could register what had happened, but the siren only gave a very high-pitched scream and started smoking. To our right, something blew out with a bang and the noise abruptly stopped.

"Run! Time to run!" the Doctor hissed, stumbling towards me. He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me behind a pile of junk just as I heard voices coming from the other side of the steel door. To our left was a rusted industrial-size oven with its door hanging open. He pushed me towards that. "Get in! Quickly!"

"What?" I said, before he pushed my head down and all but shoved me in, wicked-witch style. Then he climbed in after me.

Ovens, even industrial-sized ovens, aren't meant to hold two people. My bad arm hit the side, and I almost screamed. Instead, I bit down on the closest available surface–the Doctor's tweed-clad arm. He shut the door as far as it would go just as the steel door squeaked as it was forced open. Footsteps clattered into the room, hitting things as they went.

The Doctor fingers scrabbled at my jaw, and I let go of his arm.

"Ouch! These lights suck," a voice complained. I recognized it instantly.

"I've got a torch, Pete. Here," a deeper voice said.

I shifted a little until my face was closer to the Doctor's ear. Ignoring when he flinched away from my teeth, I whispered, "That's Pete and Frank. They're from PITT; they're part of my crew. Engineers."

He shifted until he could peer out of the crack of the door. This left me sitting on the floor with one leg on the wall opposite me and one leg stretched up the top of the oven, and my back against the back wall. He was leaning against my good arm with his legs folded on the floor under my legs and his back hunched. It was not comfortable at all.

"The alarm exploded," Frank reported. "Nothing in here works right."

"What did you expect?" Pete grumbled. I'd never liked that about Pete. "This stuff doesn't make sense. The materials aren't right. It's all a piece of–"

Someone hit their knee on something metal. "ARGH!" Frank grunted. "There's no one. Let's go."

"Now wait a minute. Something opened that door. Someone has to be here."

I whispered, "We could talk to them. They're part of my crew; they weren't even at the hospital, they couldn't have been the ones that poisoned me."

"We could talk to them, yes. But then again, you're supposed to be in traction," the Doctor reminded me. "Instead you're in an oven with a complete stranger. Might be a little hard to explain, unless you say that you're actually another future version of you, which is technically true from their point of view."

Well, that was true. But what were we going to do, stay in the oven until they left or until they found us?

"Besides," he added almost as an afterthought, "they have tails."

Tails.

What?

He motioned me forward, and I leaned as far as I could. From my viewpoint, I could barely see Frank and Pete moving around, rummaging through the junk. "There," he whispered, "they have a hole in their trousers in a rather unfortunate place, and just look at the tails!"

Frank's back was to me, and I stared hard at his jeans. This was ridiculous, there wasn't any hole in his pants…except when he shifted to the left, it sort of looked like there was…more of a rip, really…

And waving out from that rip was a thin, rat-like, cream-colored tail.

When Pete turned around, after a few moments of searching, I saw that he had a tail, too.

I bit my knuckle.

I'm sure the Doctor noticed me turning white, because he patted my leg quickly and pulled out the sonic. "I'll make them leave," he said, "then we can talk." The sonic did its frequency thing, and suddenly everything electronic in the scrapyard went absolutely crazy.

Amid the noise and smoke and sparks from the objects that were plugged in, I heard Pete yelling, "We gotta get back to the machine! Now!" The steel door squeaked again, and the Doctor kicked open the oven door and tumbled out. I followed, and he pulled me back through the red door to the dark room with the TARDIS.

I sat down. "They have tails," I told the Doctor. "My co-workers have tails and for five years I didn't even notice that they had tails. How did I not notice? I'm not high, am I? You're not smoking anything contagious, are you?"

The Doctor sat down beside me and gave me a small smile. "Welcome to the rest of the universe, Micky."

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><p><em>AN: Many, many thanks to Laughy-Taffy the Grape, Time and Fate, and iiJoshyBoo for reviewing. Your comments are really helping me make this story better, and if you notice anything that doesn't seem right, let me know. You are awesome. Also thanks to everyone who gave this story a glance._

_The plot thickens now, and it should get into the timey-wimey bit soon. Thanks for sticking with it so far!_


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: Doctor Who is not mine.

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><p><strong>December 26, 2015, 3:15 am<strong>

How do I explain it? Suppose you were a football star, and in the middle of the championship game you realised that your teammates were untiring robots. That's about how I felt to learn that two members of my engineering crew were, in fact, aliens.

I didn't know how long we had before Pete and Frank came back, but I really needed a minute to process this information. The Doctor raced around the room with his sonic in hand, taking things off the shelves and muttering to himself as he did so.

"Why do they look human?" I asked. The noise from the other room was so loud that I didn't worry about any sneaky unseen ears hearing me. Of course, we probably wouldn't be able to hear them, either.

The Doctor answered me while he wrapped some extension cord around his arm. "Perception filter! It's a great little device–you'd love to take it apart, I'll find you one sometime–that tricks you into seeing what you _think_ you should see. So they got lazy and started leaving their tails out; it must be hard to fit a tail into a pair of trousers, I suppose. But you aren't fooled by tricks like that, clever girl! You just needed someone to point it out to you."

An answer for everything, it seems. "And you know this because…" I looked from him (holding his sonic in his teeth while he flailed with the cord and tried to stay on his feet) to his TARDIS (which contains a dimension inside itself, did I mention?) and back to him. "…you're an alien too," I finished. It was really the obvious answer. My subconscious had figured it out some time ago, but hadn't seen fit to let my conscious mind worry about it.

He dropped the stuff long enough to come over to me, bend over, and look me in the eye. "No tail, though," he said with a small smile.

Though part of my mind wanted to, I couldn't quite look away from his eyes. Sharp and bright and very, very, very old, the kind of eyes that travel through space and time.

I wasn't in over my head yet, but it felt like that water was up to my chin. The hair on my arms stood on end, and the noise from the other room tried to take out my eardrums, and I was suddenly glad that the Doctor was on my side and seemingly intent on helping me. "Sorry I bit you," I said.

"Happens all the time, nothing to worry about." He offered me a hand up.

I took it and let him pull me to my feet. "What now?"

The Doctor sprang into action. "Now, we just need to get one of them alone so that we can talk to them! Here, hold this." He handed me one end of the extension cord. "When your friends come back to sort out that other room, they'll have to turn off the power to shut off the noise. Sonic's useful like that. Once they've turned off the power, we trip them with the cord and shove them into the oven! Then we'll keep them there until they tell us what we want to know. How's that for a plan?"

As plans go, it lacked a little.

"It's a plan in progress," he said, a little defensive.

"So how do we know when they're coming? Do we just wait until they turn the power off, then trip them?" I asked.

"No. We'll be able to hear them coming." He started pulling the spare parts for my machine off of the shelf and looking them over, and I hurried to his side in case he dropped any of them. We'd put a lot of work in on those. "What were Pete and Frank wearing when you saw them in that other room?"

"Tails–" I began.

"No, get past the tails! The tails are irrelevant! The tails don't exist! Well, they do, but that's not the point! Think, Micky. You have a good memory, don't you? They were wearing something we can use–"

I was already thinking. They had worn boots, and then blue jeans above that, and polos in a terrible shade of brown, and Bluetooth phones in their ears, and baseball caps…

"Bluetooths," I said, just as the Doctor said, "Ear thingies."

"Yes, yes," he continued, and brandished the parts at me. "We'll pick up the radiowaves that their Blue Teeth are transmitting."

I took them, sat on the floor, and started taking them out of the bubble wrap. After time travel, picking up radiowaves wasn't that hard. "I need something sharp, something to amplify sound, and a minute or two."

The Doctor dropped his end of the extension cord and opened the red door. Which, considering that he didn't know what would be on the other side, might not have been the smartest idea, but nothing jumped at him and he disappeared into the room.

I examined the parts. We'd designed the machine–Tracy, at the moment–we'd designed Tracy to be able to pick up any frequency of waves that we could change into energy to make the jump through time. Radiowaves were at a lower frequency than what we looked for–they had so little energy–but this receiver could pick them up. The other part he'd handed me was a spare battery that could power the receiver. Hopefully there was some juice left in it.

The Doctor reappeared with a set of speakers, one of which was undamaged enough to work, and a pair of edged pliers which he handed to me. Now, to work. Take the cases off. Rip the blue wire out by the roots, skin down the red and green wires with the pliers and wrap them together, skin down the speaker cord, wrap it around the green wire...flip the switch…

A blast of sound to rival the junkyard issued from the speaker, and we both jumped back. "Interference from the other room," I hissed as loud as I dared, and the Doctor pulled out the sonic. Immediately, the electronics' noise faded out, and crackling voices came in.

I recognized Frank first. "…basement clear…machine _crackle crackle_ have to shut down power to shut those things up. Clear to proceed?"

"You _hisssssss_ proceed," a new voice said.

That sounded an awful lot like Dr. Myers to me, and I told the Doctor so. Was he one of them too? Was Reynolds? Or Patterson or Mason?

Pete's voice was next. "I'll shut the power down, you _bzzzzt crackle crackle hissszzz_…" The Doctor hit the speaker with the palm of his hand, and the interference died back down. "And make sure all of those things are off, understand? I want everything in perfect order when the boss gets back."

"I'm heading back to control now," Frank said. "The rest of you, move out."

"Copy that," three other voices said. They all sounded rather familiar, but I couldn't place them at the moment. The engineers and physicists that I'd known had never sounded that martial.

The Doctor rose to his feet. "Now," he whispered, "we move to the other room and wait for them. Bring the radio."

It was awkward to lift, but I draped the cords across my shoulders and followed him into the junkyard room. We crouched behind the same oven we'd hidden in earlier. The Doctor tried to say something, but speaking softly was no use; you'd have to shout to be heard now. He half-yelled in my ear, "Once they turn off the power, take an end of the cord and go over to the other side. We'll–"

With a sizzling sound and a burned electric smell, all of the electronics in the room shut off as the room lost power.

It was pitch black. No light whatsoever. I couldn't see the Doctor beside me until he pulled out the sonic and turned it on. "Right. Take away the electricity, take away the lights," he said. "Right. Take one end of the cord and go over to that pile of stuff over there. Leave it loose, and we'll pull it taut when they get close enough."

"What do we do about their Bluetooths?" I asked as I did as he said.

He waved the sonic around in the air. "Sonic them. Something clever like that."

I wasn't too sure about the way the plan was working out. In fact, I'd probably feel a lot better if there was a concrete plan, but right now there was nothing to do but wait.

"_bnnnzzzt _left wing clear."

"Sonofabiscuit!" I hissed, jumping, before I clapped a hand over my mouth. Just the radio.

"We'll need to turn the radio off." The Doctor's voice was disjointed and rather creepy in the darkness. "Can't have them hearing their own transmissions."

The sonic pulsed again, and then we waited.

* * *

><p>Waiting silently in the dark for something to happen is not, and will never be, one of my favorite things to do.<p>

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><p>So I was almost thankful when the steel door squeaked and a torch threw light across the room. I tried to peer around the pile of stuff, but the light was in my direction and I quickly ducked back down again. From behind the oven, the Doctor held a finger to his lips as footsteps approached our direction.<p>

Whoever was in the room banged on some of the appliances as he or she passed. The light swept up and down, and the footsteps moved away from our trip cord. Not good. This person couldn't see us before we saw him or her; the element of surprise was always a good thing.

The light was moving around the broken Honda and coming upon us from the other side. We'd been in plain view in a few seconds.

The Doctor had the sonic in his hand, ready to move, but what did he think the sonic could do against a person? I grabbed the cord and crept over to him, ready for I'm not quite sure what. Light swept over our position, and we both shrank into the oven's side as far as we could.

Before we could make any sudden moves, the footsteps stopped, and our visitor spoke. "I don't see anything here. You sure you didn't trip a wire or something?"

My breath caught.

I ignored the Doctor's alarmed grab at my elbow and stood up. I didn't even think about hiding from him. And he had some things to answer for. I shifted some ball bearings on the ground with my foot, just to get his attention.

My friend Riv turned around; his eyes got very wide and his mouth fell open. _Nice tail_, I mouthed.

His expression didn't change, and that's when my brain finally caught up to my body and asked it what, exactly, it thought it was doing. He's an alien, Micky. What if he's thinking about turning you in right now?

I made a slicing motion across my neck to try and communicate. _Come on, Riv,_ I thought, _please get off the phone and help me figure out what's going on._ _Please._

The Doctor stood too, and Riv flinched. "Oh, um," he stammered, "what'd you say, Pete?"

Come on, Riv. Even if he was an alien, he couldn't have forgotten that time I brought him to stay at my house for a week when he couldn't pay rent. Not the time we went to Switzerland on a whim. Not the break-of-dawn waffles. He couldn't turn me in.

My friend swallowed. "Well…" he said. "I thought I saw a rat. Nothing. It's nothing. I'm going to, well, going to check the other rooms like you said and then report back to control. Yeah. Right. Later. Over and out." He ripped the Bluetooth out of his ear and pointed at the two of us. Just pointed.

"You asked about the perception filters," said the Doctor, coming nearer. He pointed his sonic at Riv and it squealed briefly. "That's it, on his wrist."

Riv had black fur and dark brown eyes, but not much of a nose. His mouth was too wide to be human, and even though he stood upright, he stood hunched over a little. His fingers were very long and had an extra joint, and his ears were on top of his head. He looked like something that had escaped out of some insane zoo, in his jeans and brown polo.

"And he," the Doctor continued, "is a Streechuuulan."

I swallowed. "And you know, I really thought about dating you."

Riv swallowed. With all that fur he had, it looked strange. "Same here."

"You're a monkey," I informed him.

"No. Streechuuulan," he said. "I guess you want to know what's going on."

"You'd guess right," I said back. "And you may start with what a Streechuuulan is, how you got here, and why you decided not to tell me that you all look like monkeys."

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><p><em>Hello, all! Sorry for taking so long to update. I've been writing this story so far with a slightly vague plan; the Doctor would be proud. I've firmed it up and hopefully the writing will go smoother than it has been going.<em>

_My very heartfelt thanks to Laughy-Taffy the Grape, EmeraldsandAmethyst, and Artemis Wolfe. I can't even tell you how much it makes my day that you take time to leave a review. It's amazing._

_If you'd like, leave a review and tell me how I'm doing! Advice is always welcome. Until next time!_


	6. Chapter 6

Doctor Who is not mine.

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><p><strong>In the TARDIS…<strong>

I don't consider myself to be an especially cowardly person; I'd like to think that anyone delving into the realm of physics has at least some courage. Math is scary, right?

But somehow, being brave when it comes to math and being brave when it comes to people who might want to kill you are two different things. So as much as I hated that the Doctor and Riv were going out to confront the others alone…I was also a little relieved that I wouldn't be in the possible line of fire.

Which didn't mean that I wasn't ready to move at a moment's notice.

But here I was in the TARDIS, at the Doctor's request, watching the TARDIS's scanner to see the footage that the cameras were transmitting. At least if something went wrong, I'd know. My stomach was still in knots.

I looked down at the strip of cling wrap I still held. On it a note was scrawled in a barely legible hand: _This one, Micky_.

I'd been staring at that handwriting for over two decades now; it was my own handwriting.

The only thing was, I was pretty sure that I hadn't written that note yet.

**December 26, 2015, 3:30 am**

Basically, they wanted our world.

"No, not really," Riv said. "They want the world, but without you in it."

"Without _me?_"

"Not you personally, Mick." The words looked so strange coming from a creature with so much fur. The ruff around his neck particularly held my attention. How in the world had I never noticed it before? Why was it that when I'd given him a hug, I'd never felt the slightest hint of fur? "Without you means without humans. You know, you lot."

The Doctor jumped in with an explanation. "The Streechuuul are notorious for being an expansionistic race. Lots of colonization, fleets of ships to aid colonization, many planets taken over and their original inhabitants forced out or, or integrated into society. As workers and slaves and such. The Streechuuulan Empire used to stretch across a whole string of planets in the Milky Way."

"Yeah," said Riv, staring at the Doctor. "A long time ago. So I hear."

The Doctor wasn't finished. He leaned back against the oven and said, "But you normally take over planets that are young. Ones that aren't very populated, where the inhabitants can't fight you. So why land on Earth?"

"Didn't land. Crashed. Engine malfunction, or something along those lines."

I bet I could have fixed it. Whatever it was, I could have put it back together, given time and the proper tools.

"There wasn't any way to repair the ship, after we crashed," Riv said, shaking his head. He swayed as he did so, long arms swinging back and forth. "It was destroyed. So I hear; I've seen the pieces."

"So you hear," the Doctor repeated.

"I wasn't actually born yet," Riv confessed. "The crash was back in 1950 or so. Only a few of them actually remember–Chakzaa, Shaasan, Tirriiich…that's Reynolds, Myers, and Mason. All the others died at some point or other."

"So, why would you need a time machine?" I asked. "It seems like a new ship would be more practical."

"Their planet is many, many light-years away," the Doctor informed me.

"Earth doesn't have the technology to get us back," Riv agreed. "And it won't for many years. We could have hitched a ride, but someone kept running all the aliens on this planet off." He fixed the Doctor with a very pointed stare–and how I could tell that it was a pointed stare when his face looked very different was a mystery to me. The Doctor, though, was not paying attention.

"And so instead of space travel, you opt for time travel…clever! You can do whatever you want with Earth's history, if you have a time machine on your hands. Never even have to go back to your own planet at all."

"Right. Reynolds wants to go backwards far enough that humans haven't developed civilizations yet, and set up a colony there," Riv explained, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

So I felt compelled to point out, "But if the Streechuuul–you–set up a colony back then, that will mess up human history. We never had any alien colonies in history that I know of." But just in case, I looked to the Doctor for confirmation. The last thirty minutes had proved very enlightening on the subject of how much I didn't know.

Riv jumped and put the Bluetooth back in his ear very quickly. "Yeah, Pete, give me another minute…what is it?" He took a few steps away to talk to Pete, kicking junk out of the way as he did so.

I'd expected him to listen in on the conversation, but instead, the Doctor leaned in towards me. "Well…that's not strictly true. Actually there were many aliens, hordes of them all the time, but that's not important right now. I don't remember any colonies of Streechuuul, that's the important thing. Their going back in time alters history, but maybe nothing at all happens. Or…"

"Or?"

"Or maybe history changes completely. The human race expands differently. People like Winston Churchill or Vincent Van Gogh or George Washington or Francis Bacon are never born or are known for something completely different. Maybe you never exist, or you live as an artist or a slave or a…a mime. Everything that you know changes."

Okay. Something didn't add up. "But once they change time, if I'm never born or live as a mime, then I'm not here to build a time machine, so they never go back in time, so time doesn't change in the first place…but it does anyway. Does reality collapse then?"

The Doctor thought about this. "Yes. No. Maybe. Sometimes the universe sorts itself out. It's all very…timey-wimey."

How descriptive.

But Riv walked back to us now, Bluetooth in hand, and his face was grim. "I have to go back to control," he said. "Pete thinks I'm taking too long, and I am. They'll come looking for me soon."

"One thing, before you go," the Doctor said, his voice suddenly very low. He took two casual steps towards Riv, right into his personal space. My friend rocked back on his heels, and when the Doctor smiled, Riv's fur raised like a cornered animal's. "What's your position on erasing over 10,000 years of human history?"

Something about how he said that made me remember the way his eyes had appeared to me earlier, and I found myself holding my breath as Riv answered.

"We're not conquerors," he said. "There's another option. We use the machine to go far enough forward in time that Earth has the tech to get us back to our planet. At least far enough that humans won't panic at the sight of an alien. A lot of us want that option, instead."

A beat of silence, and then the Doctor nodded. "Well, as long as you're going to control to see the others, you might as well have company. We'll go, too."

"What?"

"I'm sure I can talk some sense into them in a few minutes," the Doctor said, straightening his jacket. "Talking usually works. Not always, obviously, since there are wars and things, but in this case it would be easy to–"

"Not Micky," Riv said. "She can't come with us."

"Why?" the Doctor and I asked at the same time.

"Reynolds tried to have you killed," he told me. His face did not twitch; he looked as serious as he could with all that fur. I may, however, have been deciphering his emotions wrong with that face. "I was there when he told James to do it. I stayed after your heart attack, to make sure they didn't try it again. You did try to destroy our work, after all." He looked back to the Doctor. "She hasn't seen that side of them. You have, haven't you?"

The Doctor turned to me slowly, worrying his lower lip. "Micky…"

"I've worked with these people for five years," I informed him. "I think I can handle myself."

Riv jumped again and held the Bluetooth to his ear. "Almost done, Pete." The strain in his voice was obvious to me. "Thought I heard something…what? Backup isn't…fine." He ripped it out of his ear. "Pete's sending backup to my position. They'll be here soon."

"Right then! They can't find the TARDIS. They absolutely can't find the TARDIS, because then they'll try to use her or take her apart, and we can't have that," the Doctor said quickly. "Micky, I have a job for you." He leaned over and looked me in the eye. "I need you to go back to the TARDIS and make her invisible. It's not hard; just pull the springy lever up, punch the green button and turn the faucet to hot. Sexy doesn't usually let anyone else handle her, but I think she'll make an exception in this case." One side of his mouth quirked up, and an eye twitched in what was almost a wink.

"What do I do then, just wait for you to come back?" That didn't sound appealing at all.

He quickly soniced Riv's Bluetooth, and my friend took several steps back. "There. Now the scanners will pick up what his ear thingie is transmitting. Are there security cameras?"

"Yeah," said Riv. He fiddled with the perception filter on his wrist, and in a flash the human façade of my friend stood before us. No hint of fur at all, but I could still see the tail.

The Doctor patted me on my good shoulder. "The scanners can pick those up too. Just hack them. It's very simple. And then, when we get into trouble, you can come rescue us or something."

"Don't want to have every egg in one basket," said Riv, flashing a grin at me. "Really, go. Now. They're nearly here."

What else was there to do? "Be careful," I said, and ran back to the room with the TARDIS.

At the console, I made the mistake of trying to pull the first lever with my still-healing arm, and quickly stopped. How long was it going to take for me to heal, anyway? Springy lever, green button, faucet…surely I had enough time to see if the TARDIS was really invisible. It'd be terrible to assume that and find that it wasn't true.

I stuck my head out of the door to find that I was looking at nothing. I could see the wall behind me illuminated in the TARDIS's interior lights, but no TARDIS.

It must be able to deflect light. Or maybe it just turned a color that human eyes couldn't see? Could a Streechuuulan's eyes see that color? Surely not, or the Doctor would have said so.

But standing in the doorway of an invisible time machine wasn't the best idea at the moment, so I quickly shut the door and turned back to set up the scanner.

On my way there, I tripped over something lying on the floor. Which was strange, because I could have sworn that the floor was empty earlier. Now, there was a dark object wrapped in cling wrap right beside my foot.

As I picked it up, I saw the writing on the wrap, hastily scribbled in black marker.

_This one, Micky._

It was my own handwriting.

Suddenly, the TARDIS was very silent and still.

I looked up, scanning the passageways back into the ship for any signs of movement. There was none. "Hello?"

No one answered, so I assumed whoever had left the package was gone.

I really, really hoped they were gone.

The object hidden in the cling wrap took on shape and definition as I peeled the wrap off, and what was revealed was not what I wanted to see. As the last bit of wrap fell away, a black handgun rested against my palm. It was cold, steely, and looked like it meant business.

And I swore that it looked very similar to the one that Other Me had broken my collarbone with.

Had I really just gifted myself the handgun that had broken one of my bones? I didn't want to touch it any longer, so I set it down on the console and switched the scanner on. Bursts of noise from the Bluetooth transmissions came out, and I jumped straight up in the air.

"Just transmissions, Micky, that's all," I muttered as I examined the typewriter on the console. Hadn't he said something about the yellow button accessing feeds? I pushed it, and the scanner flickered to life, showing a gray corridor as seen from a corner of the ceiling. A security camera. Riv was escorting the Doctor down the corridor–now that was interesting. On the scanner, I could see Riv both as a Streechuuulan and a human simultaneously, one image imposed over the other.

"I'm heading back to control now with the intruder," Riv said into his Bluetooth.

"Copy that. Frank and Bill are coming to meet you, so hold on for a minute," Pete responded. "Don't want you to lose it. What is it?"

Riv and the Doctor looked at each other for a moment, and then Riv said with a devil-may-care grin, "It's the Doctor."

I was not expecting the response that name provoked. Within thirty seconds, they were surrounded by ten of the physicists and engineers, including Pete and Frank, all looking like security guards. All holding batons. All people I had worked with. All Streechuuulan.

"Now, you really didn't have to go through all this trouble for me," said the Doctor. "I just wanted to talk to the person in charge."

"The boss is arriving in five minutes," Pete said, brandishing his stick at the Doctor. "We'll see what he does to you then."

* * *

><p><em>I'd like to thank Laughy-Taffy the Grape, WhooligAni, Artemis Wolfe, and moonlightshade for reviewingalerting. Your support is amazing and inspiring, and it motivates me to do my very best. That's also why it takes me some time to update; I don't want to put anything subpar up here! You all deserve the best! _


	7. Chapter 7

Doctor Who still is not mine.

* * *

><p><strong>In the TARDIS...<strong>

They turned the power back on before they took the Doctor away, and then they marched him down a sloping corridor and through a room filled with long tables. 'Mess hall' was the first word that came to my mind, because of the very Spartan, colorless, military feel it had. I very much doubted that the government knew about this place, or they might have launched an investigation against us to make sure we weren't terrorists. Which, as it turns out, we were.

The Doctor spent a few seconds mimicking the Streechuuul's way of swinging their arms wide when they walked, before Pete tightened his grip on the Doctor's shoulder and shook him almost hard enough to make him lose his balance. After that, the Doctor tore himself free of both Pete and Frank and straightened his jacket with a snap. When they reached for him again, the Doctor gave them an edged smile that absolutely did not reach his eyes and said, "I think my legs still remember how to walk on their own." He made no move to run, of course, just walked purposefully in the middle of the pack. His armed guard now seemed like an escort.

As they walked, the Doctor kept glancing up at the ceiling–looking for the security cameras, I realized, once he caught sight of one and smiled through it and at me.

They went down another gray hallway, always sloping down into the ground. The other lab we had, which Other Me destroyed, had been underground too. Was that a Streechuuul thing, or just a characteristic of people who didn't want to be found?

At the end of the hallway was a reinforced door with a number pad on the side. Something was scratched into the surface of the door in small loops and straight lines. I was about to move my attention elsewhere when the scratches shivered and rearranged themselves into a word that I could read: CONTROL.

Translation matrix. Very useful.

Riv moved to the front of the group to put in the number, and I was struck by how small he was compared to the others. He was taller than Pete, who was only about five feet tall as a human or Streechuuulan, but he was slimmer than any of the others, even the females. Frank, in particular, towered over him. As a Streechuuulan, he must have been seven feet tall and built like a gorilla.

Riv punched in the number: six digits, and each one had a unique tone to it, but I didn't have time to recognize what they were.

The Doctor looked up at the security camera before he walked through the door.

Under my hands, the console vibrated and warmed as the TARDIS screen flickered and switched cameras to one that showed the inside of the control room from a corner of the ceiling. One entire wall of the room was covered in computer screens, showing the feeds from the cameras and graphing models of time travel. A Streechuuulan sat at a card table–her human façade was Anne, she had helped build the cooling system on our machine–eating a slice of pizza and fingering the baton at her waist. As six of the escort (including Riv) and the Doctor shuffled into the small room, a Streechuuulan sitting in a chair in front of the screens stood to greet them.

"Doctor. Welcome to PITT," Reynolds said.

The Doctor stepped out of the middle of his escort and approached Reynolds. Reynolds. Of course. The boss. My boss.

Reynolds' age was apparent in his Streechuuulan form. His fur was almost pure white, his skin wrinkled, but he proudly stood bolt upright, just like he did as a human.

"Yes, well, thank you," the Doctor said. He was a head shorter than Reynolds, but he did not seem intimidated by this. "Lovely hideout you have here. Reminds me of a colony you lot had on Mraxis, a hundred years ago. Still there, as far as I know, even after that flood and the general's 80th birthday party. This place is a bit small and dingy, but then you probably don't get as many visitors, eh? Too top secret for parties, that's what the general said."

"Why are you here, Doctor?" Reynolds asked patiently, as though he was the Doctor's wise old grandfather.

In response, the Doctor reached into a pocket, pulled out a small black wallet, and held it open. He didn't seem to notice how everyone reached for their baton as he did so. "I'm here on behalf of the United Nations. They're a little worried about this time travelling project of yours…and so am I."

"The UN? I didn't know they were interested in this project," Reynolds said, smooth as butter. "Moreover, I was unaware that _you_ ran errands for them."

"Oh, that's just me, hopping all over the place being helpful," the Doctor responded, shrugging. "I do wonder what you plan to do with a time machine, though."

"We aren't going to gallivant across the universe, if that's what you are concerned about."

"No, of course not. I doubt you have anything sophisticated enough to even get off this planet." I doubted that the Doctor consciously meant to insult Tracy like that, but my hackles rose at the challenge. It wasn't a relevant emotion, so I tried to discard it by shaking myself. In doing so, my hand hit the warm metal of the gun still resting on the console, and I jerked the hand away.

"However, you could still do a good bit of damage with what you have," the Doctor continued. "And given your history of colonization, I'd like to know whether or not you plan on using this machine for…nefarious purposes."

"Such as?"

"Well, you lot have a nasty habit of messing up the development of all the natural species of planets. It's rather rude, really. Back on Episill, you were close to wiping out the entire future of the humans there. No buttery papaos, no Great Axial Band, no…well," he said, noticing Reynolds' expression, "maybe Episill is still a touchy subject. Earth's already had a great, marvelous history. Don't mess up everything that's happened."

"What choice do we have?" Reynolds asked. "If we are trapped on this insignificant planet, why not make it something significant?"

"Insignificant?" The Doctor took a step forward. "You think Earth is insignificant? You think that the people on this planet, past and future, are insignificant? I can name entire galaxies that will have less impact on the universe than Earth will." He shook his head. "_Significant_. Useless word."

"What would you suggest, then?" Reynolds asked, his voice colder.

"I've got a time machine," the Doctor offered, "that goes anywhere in space and time. I can take you all back to your planet, or any other planet, no problem. Whatever time you like, as long as the universe agrees with it. You can live your lives with the people you know. What do you say?"

A couple of the Streechuuul shifted, and Pete uttered something like a growl. Reynolds started to shake his head, a smile growing on his face-that same smile he always got before he pointed out a really obvious mistake someone had made. "No."

"No?"

"No, Doctor. We do not wish to leave this planet."

Pete and Frank reached for their batons. The Doctor shifted on his feet, Reynolds kept smiling that smile, and Anne's pizza was getting cold.

"You could always go forward," the Doctor suggested softly. "To a time when you can return on your own. To a time when Earth will accept aliens; it's coming. Or even stay in the present, if you wish."

"We don't want that," said Pete, but stopped when Reynolds gave him a look.

"It's against our principles, Doctor," the boss said. He paced back towards the computer screens, hands clasped behind his back. "Many years ago, we were given a mission to investigate a planet in the system over from this one. It would have become a new colony, but we were not able to complete that mission…and we cannot return with nothing." He turned back around. "Earth will do."

"I can take you to that planet," the Doctor pointed out, "right at the time you were supposed to arrive. Provided that it isn't already colonized. You don't have to take Earth."

Riv stepped forward. "Chakzaa," he said, addressing Reynolds. "That's not a bad idea."

"Earth will make a much better colony. It's atmosphere and climate are very similar to that of our own planet," said Reynolds, "and the resources are plentiful."

"But we wipe out the human race doing that," said someone in the back. It was Will, good old Will, who I would have bought those concert tickets for had I known that he would be standing up for my species in the future.

"That happens," said Frank.

"If it weren't for humans, we could not have built this time machine in the first place," Riv pointed out. "If we hadn't found Micky–"

"We don't need Micky Summers to touch our machine again," said Reynolds, his face growing dark. Seeing him now, I could believe that he had tried to kill me. As his lip pulled back, his canines were bared, and a rumble came from somewhere deep in his chest.

Riv shook his head. "We weren't getting anywhere fast until she joined the project, and it's her species that will suffer–"

"And she herself who tried to destroy our work!" Reynolds snarled.

Other Me, future me, had done that. It would be several years until I did that–but I had decided not to do it. Hadn't I? But if I didn't, then the test would run and the Streechuuul would go back in time…

The Doctor watched Reynolds' face very carefully as the boss composed himself. "But enough arguing in front of our guest," he said. "After all, he did bring us a very valuable present."

"Sorry?" the Doctor asked. "I wasn't aware of that."

"'a time machine that goes anywhere in time and space,'" Reynolds quoted. "It isn't fair, Doctor, that only you may travel wherever you like. We will be able to do the same."

"You can't fly the TARDIS," the Doctor warned. "Don't touch her."

"We don't need to use your ship," said Reynolds, his mouth quirking to the side. "Your help is not required. We can, however, use the TARDIS to modify our own machine. Our work will take us wherever we want to go."

The pride in his voice was unmistakable. Tracy was his baby too.

And speaking of that, where exactly was Tracy? Surely one of the computer screens showed a feed from a camera watching the machine. Wasn't that it on the far left? And the one beside that, and the one beside that, too. I hit the yellow button until the TARDIS screen switched to the feed from a camera in a well-lit lab. And in the middle of the room, with two Streechuuul watching over it, was Tracy.

Oh. Other Me had done some real damage to her, and she hadn't been fixed properly. If Reynolds thought that he didn't need me to work on her, he was crazy, because those wires should not be sticking out that way.

Perhaps there was a way to reach her. If I could get to Tracy and the Doctor could get back to the TARDIS, we could grab Riv and meet somewhere in the past or future. We'd have plenty of time to figure out a plan then.

Reynolds motioned, and two of his engineers left the room. "Now, Doctor, if you would lead us back to your machine?"

The Doctor smiled. "No. But I am very interested in seeing yours."

Reynolds nodded. "We'll find it soon enough. But while we wait, why not? A professional opinion could help our work."

Well, it seemed that the Doctor was about to find Tracy and I was in the TARDIS. This could work too, except he didn't know how to fly Tracy, I wasn't very sure how to fly the TARDIS, and I didn't know how to get a message to him.

If I could only get the TARDIS down to where Tracy was! Then we'd be able to swap, with many angry Streechuuul looking on and wanting to take both the TARDIS and me apart. Perhaps not a good idea.

As I stood debating different plans, I heard someone speak into their Bluetooth. "The boss is moving to the basement. Three pairs need to spread out and search for the time machine called the TARDIS."

They wouldn't find us here, invisible as we were.

And yet, when someone's Bluetooth relayed the sounds of a searcher entering the junk room, I tensed, and my fingers strayed to the handgun on the console. They would be in this room next. What then?

By the time the searching pair opened the doors to our room, I still did not have an answer to that question.

* * *

><p><em>AN: Many thanks to the wonderful people who reviewed, alerted, and favorited: animemonkey13, Laughy-Taffy the Grape, Artemis Wolfe, Bianca Bubbles, HayatoxAkemi, MissLizziebeth, and darknessjewel. You are all amazing. Let me know what you think of the story so far, if you'd like. Until next time!_


	8. Chapter 8

Doctor Who is not mine.

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><p><strong>In the TARDIS…<strong>

"There's nothing here, James."

A frustrated growl. "That time machine has to be here _somewhere_." Nothing but shuffling sounds for a minute, then, "Don't leave yet, Will. Wait a minute."

"James, honestly. You can see for yourself that nothing's here–"

"This isn't about the machine, Will. Stop moving."

"What?"

The TARDIS still picked up the airwave babble from the Bluetooths, and the screen was surely showing what was transpiring down in the basement with Tracy and the Doctor. But at the moment, all of my attention was honed to a laser point and focused on the voice of the creature who had, only a few hours ago–it felt like ages–tried to make my heart stop beating.

This search party had to include James, didn't it.

Will was a decent sort, and not likely to kill me on sight if we–the TARDIS and I–were discovered, but I didn't like my chances with the other one. So even though I had privately resolved not to touch it again, the handgun was growing warm in my palms as I leaned against the door.

"Take your Bluetooth off," James ordered. They both must have done so, because I could no longer hear their transmissions, only what came through the door.

Why wouldn't they leave already?

"Listen, Susshraa," James said, "Are you committed to this?"

"What?" Will asked defensively. Or Susshraa, whatever his name was. "What do you mean by that?"

"You know what I mean. You don't seem very happy about the plan that Chakzaa has for us." Chakzaa. Reynolds. Names were going to be a pain from now on.

From the sound of it, Will took a few steps toward the TARDIS. "Why would I be happy about wiping out the human race?" he asked. "They haven't done anything to us."

"Except force us to live in secrecy, kill us on sight," said James, very dryly. "You know, if they had the chance, that's what they would do."

This from the guy who had tried to kill me.

"It just…doesn't seem right, Chookcuun."

"But are you with us, Susshraa? That's what I'm asking. Are you going to see this plan through?"

There was silence for a minute outside. I glanced back at the screen to see that the Doctor, Reynolds, Riv and the rest of the party were standing in front of Tracy. The Doctor held his sonic screwdriver to her–what was he doing to my machine?–and something sparked in Tracy's circuits. Everyone took a few steps back.

Hopefully the Doctor had a plan of action, because I had nothing at the moment, except to wait for James and Will to go away.

Will finally spoke. "You know Riv says there's another way."

"Human-lover. He's spent too much time around them. And around the chief, Micky Summers."

"You didn't have to try and kill her," Will snapped back. He walked a couple of steps, either right or left.

"Are you blind? She tried to kill us! You were there." James also shifted.

"Did she? Would she, after all we went through? And say she did: what do we do if we change the past, and Micky's never born, and she never helps us build the machine at all?"

"Time sorts itself out. You've seen the equations. Something would happen to keep the timeline in place. Now, are you with us or not?"

Please, Will. You can do it. Come on.

"What's stopping us from going forward?" Will asked. "The future's just as good as the past, if you ask me. I know Riv is a troublemaker and all, but he's right this time. Chakzaa should send us forward so we can live out in the open."

"So you aren't going to help us," James said. His voice was very low.

"…I don't see why I should tell you what I think! I'm here, aren't I? What more do you want out of me?"

"If you're not going to help us, then you're against the cause."

"And what are you going to do about it?"

I glanced back at the TARDIS screen. The Doctor leaned over Tracy, inspecting the various parts, while several Streechuuul with batons stayed within a few feet of him. Maybe the Doctor could get Tracy going and…do what? Tracy didn't do space. If I could get the Streechuuul out of the building, then the Doctor could jump forward in time and we could meet up.

Someone outside the TARDIS snarled, a fast ripping sound, and then the room was filled with growling and keening and the sound of two objects of flesh and fur and anger colliding.

I hadn't really wanted Will to start a fight, but while they were fighting, they weren't looking for me.

That happy thought lasted until something slammed into the TARDIS door, on the exact spot where my shoulder was on the other side. "Ouch!" I hissed, and "Ooof!" said the person on the other side of the door.

The invisible door. Air becoming solid and stopping momentum, is what it must have looked like, and everyone who had worked on Tracy understood enough physics to know that normally air does not behave like that. Ergo, we had been discovered.

"What the–" said the person on the other side of the door. James.

Time for a plan. In the movies, the hero opens the door very quickly and uses it to knock the bad guy cold. In real life, I didn't have a prayer of generating enough force to put a concussion on a seven-foot monkey with the TARDIS door. Besides, the TARDIS door opened in, not out. The handgun I held, however, if I moved fast enough, might have an effect on James' skull.

I'd have to be fast, though. Thank goodness Other Me had had the sense to break the collarbone of the arm that wasn't dominant. Something to remember if I ever became Other Me at some point.

Deep breaths, Micky. Here we go.

* * *

><p><strong>December 26, 2015 4:00 am<strong>

The door opened to the sight of James' surprised face. But with the perception filter, his face might not be at the exact level I thought it was. So the plan was to swing overhand and aim high.

I thought it would be hard to hit something that looked human, but I found that my arm moved almost of its own volition. The handgun came up and the butt of the weapon found his head, almost a foot above where the perception filter placed it. He staggered, and I swung again. This time, he fell and didn't move.

Panting, I looked up at Will, whose wide eyes didn't bode well for his listening to me.

I raised both my hands in front of me; my collarbone only protested a little. "Will, please stay where you are."

"That's the TARDIS," Will said, in a choked voice.

"Yes. It is. Please stay where you are, Will, I need your help."

"You're here. You're here and I found you and you knocked out James! He's going to kill you when he wakes up!"

What a change. "Listen, Will, focus."

"But you just hit James with–"

"William!" I said, using the sharp tone that had always worked so well on him when we were working on Tracy together. True to form, he snapped to attention.

"Listen," I said, "do you really not agree with Reynolds' plan?"

He hesitated a moment before answering, "No, I don't. But how did you–"

"I need to find a way to get the TARDIS and myself and the Doctor and maybe Riv out of here," I said. "I know what's going on. Riv told me. But right now we're in a bind and I need you to tell me if you can help me or not. Either way, I'd like to know where we stand."

At my feet, James stirred and moaned. What a skull he had!

Will looked down thoughtfully at the other Streechuuul, and delivered a swift kick to his head. James stopped stirring, though I could still see him breathe.

"I'll help, Micky," he said. "I agreed with Riv all along. But some of them get angry when other people have opinions."

"Good man, Will. Or…Streechuuulan." I patted his arm. Perhaps it was just my imagination–or rather, my consciousness battling the perception filter–but I could have sworn that I felt fur.

I had really met my quota of luck with this search party. I tried not to think of all the ways the situation could have gone.

"They're all in there with the time machine," Will told me. "It's broken, but we're working on fixing it. Why did you have to go and blow it up, anyway?"

"I haven't done it yet," I told him. "Are you supposed to check in with anyone? Is James?"

"Oh!" Will put his Bluetooth in and spoke momentarily to someone at Control. "Yeah, we'll be back soon, we just want to make extra sure that nothing is here. Yeah. Over and out." He took the device out and said, "What now, chief?"

"Now…we get down to the basement. I'm not doing anyone any good up here. And we have to do something with James."

"There's lots of places in the junk room that we could stash him. We could bring some extension cord and tie him up," Will suggested hopefully.

I didn't see anything wrong with that. "Bring him. Then, if you can get me down to Tracy without being seen, we can make a plan."

"…Tracy?"

Oh. Right. I'd come up with that name only an hour or so ago. "The time machine. If we can get down to the basement, then I'll think up something from there. Or the Doctor will." I shut the TARDIS door firmly; it faded into the background.

"You'd better think of something, Micky. I don't really trust the Doctor," Will told me. "How do I get you down there without anyone noticing? We all know your face."

They did all know my face.

And then something pieced itself together in my head. The tools were right in front of me.

"William, James doesn't seem to need his perception filter any more. Mind showing me how to use it?"

* * *

><p><em>AN: My thanks to everyone who reviewed/alerted/favorited: animemonkey13, Laughy-Taffy the Grape, Artemis Wolfe, EnchantedDaydream, jatetiltheend, SarBrook, Silver-moonshine01, The Eye of The Oncoming Storm, sashaxh, and SummoningShadows18. As always, I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart!_

_Several people brought up the point that since the TARDIS door locks on its own, why is Micky worried about the Streechuuul getting it in the first place? Which is an extremely valid point. The thing is, Micky doesn't know that; she's only been on the TARDIS a few hours, and while the Doctor explained the mechanics, he forgot to mention some of the more mundane things. He sent Micky back to the TARDIS to keep her out of harm's way, and because he was sending her back there anyway he decided to give her a job (keeping the TARDIS hidden) that was likely to make her stay. But now that the search party has come through, and the situation has changed, Micky sees her job as done and her main priority is Tracy and rescuing the Doctor._

_I definitely should have made all of this more clear in the story, and I apologize. Thank you for pointing it out to me, or I might have missed it entirely! I'll see if I can work some of this in in later chapters._

_Until next time!_


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